My name is Graham Hicks, and I have competed and trained as a strongman since 2010. Back in 2010, I was an u105kg athlete until 2012, when I decided to move up and challenge myself in the open category. Seven years later, in 2019, I won the title of Britain's Strongest Man.
Throughout my career, I have seen many changes in my own training, and advancements in coaching over the last two decades have accelerated. But other than knowledge, one thing you cannot buy or read from a book is experience... and I have bags of it!
When you're in your 20s, your body recovers so quickly that you take it for granted. You can train hard and heavy and hardly notice it at times.
This all started to change when I hit 30. After five years in the sport with relatively few injuries, I found that I was getting niggles much more often and having to take breaks from training at times due to injuries.
I could no longer train like I had five years earlier, and the main reason for this was that I had gotten stronger and therefore required a little more rest between sessions. From this moment onwards, I became much more methodical when it came to programming my training.
This approach worked fine for years, and I didn't really dive into things like recovery and rest until I hit the grand age of 40!
Why? The awareness wasn't there like it is now, and the availability of recovery tools wasn't there either. Ice baths, for example, weren't nearly as common!
This is where things got interesting as I'm still extremely strong, arguably maybe the strongest I have ever been, but there has been a huge change in my body.
I now require more rest periods during my training and more recovery time between heavy sessions. I cannot do a heavy deadlift and a heavy squat in the same week, for example.
So, my advice to people reading this is to always be patient with your body and with your training.
No one person knows everything, so be open-minded, listen, and learn new things. But most of all, and this one is extremely important... Look after yourself!
Raising a big family myself, I know the importance of being healthy and happy for my kids.
There is no reason to stop because we are getting older. We just need to ADAPT to all the changes in our bodies, our lives, and the world that continually evolves around us.
Thanks for reading.
